Letters to the Editor for Feb. 15, 2013

Friday

Feb 15, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Star-Banner readers share their views on School Board and City Council members, George Albright, panhandling, guns and TV news.

Wasting our moneyEveryone is excited that FedEx is going to build a distribution center here. I have a better idea.Hollywood should do a film in Ocala, a new version of “Dumb and Dumber.” It can be called “The Dumbest and the Most Dumbest.” The stars will all be local people, and they will play their own parts. It is so simple; they will not have to act since they are playing themselves. All of the stars will be from the Marion County School Board and Ocala City Council. They are fighting over our money, our tax dollars.There is an old joke about a busload of lawyers going over a cliff. “What do you think? ” The answer is the bus was not big enough.Well, we can rewrite that joke and put all the members of the School Board and the City Council in the bus and have their lawyers drive them to Key West. While they are down there we should impeach every one of them. Yes, yes, fire all of them. They are wasting our money on lawyers to decide who gets to keep our money.They all are totally incompetent and totally worthless. They are not doing the job we elected them to do. That job is to run the city and the schools at the lowest cost and not waste money by paying lawyers. I will gladly pay for the gas for the bus just to get them out of our city and county.City Councilman Daniel Owen can have the lead role in the movie for denying to waive the rental fee for the Belleview High School JROTC Cadet Military Ball. Daniel kicks the students to get even with the School Board. That will show how you take care of our youth. After we fill them, then we can elect some reasonable and responsible people to run our local government.They are qualified to go to Washington, D.C., and join the incompetent idiots who we also elected and are wasting our money on the federal level.Jim HolbertOcala

Albright's right onOn Page 11A of your Sunday edition, I carefully perused the article titled “Mr President: Address ‘fatherless homes'” by George Albright.I desire to publicly thank Albright for the superb article. It is absolutely true and beautifully written and full of common sense. If any of you reading this have not seen or read the article, I urge you to find it. I just hope the powers in Washington read it.Furthermore, Albright, I hope you have considered running for governor.Col. Stanley BaranOcklawaha

Wrong kind of ambitionI couldn't agree more with the writer of the letter “Panhandling problem” (Feb. 13). I never contribute to their “endeavors.”The other day I was in a turn lane on State Road 200 where a panhandler had stationed himself. There was a sign on the post in the median that was offering “Job Opportunities” with a local telephone number. The next time I was at this same intersection, the sign was gone — the panhandler, however, was still there.On another occasion a panhandler approached my window to ask if there was employment in the state on my front vehicle tag. He said that he was unable to get a job because he has a beard and was dressed rather inappropriately for a job interview. I am sure that if this gentleman went to any local assistance facility that they could get him a shave, shower and a clean set of clothes, thus making him employable.Terry HookOcala

Armed and readyFor you who are too young to remember World War II, the Austrian government required all guns to be registered and one year later outlawed ownership of guns.Being that all gun owners were registered, it was no problem gathering the guns. Then the Nazis declared war on Austria, and the only ones who had guns were the German troops. This resulted in the slaughter of millions in the death camps.Don't believe that it couldn't happen here, with the exception that the troops might not be from some foreign country. Because of our Constitution allowing citizens to own weapons, we have been free of any foreign power. No country has the stomach to invade a country where everyone is armed — until now.Alex SzatkowskiSummerfield

It's liberalThe writer of “Education gone awry” (Feb. 7) scoffs at the charge that the media is liberal. Other letter writers imply that those who watch Fox News are brainwashed.Of course all of the media is not liberal. Fox News absolutely tilts to the right and talk radio is predominately conservative. That leaves NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, NPR, PBS, MSNBC, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” “The Colbert Report,” “The View,” “Ellen,” Oprah, Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley. How is that for “fair and balanced?”There is no such thing as an honest press anymore. The Friday before the presidential election, Brian Williams of NBC News reported that the jobs report contained good news for the Obama administration and the Dow responded in “a big way.” The Dow went up 34 points that day. Only a fool or a biased reporter would refer to a 34-point change in the Dow as responding in a big way. Ed HallOcala